Breathe You In
by idioticonion
Summary: Barney's not-so-secret indulgence. A sequel to The Perfect Woman Part 12 Robotics but can be read stand-alone. Spoilers for 4.13 Three Days of Snow


**Breathe you in**

Sex is fun, right?

No.

Sex is danger. Sex is thrilling. Sex is even a little terrifying. The moment before, right before, _just_ before… It's like jumping off a cliff with no rope, no parachute, no safety net.

And it's like that _every time_.

Barney opens his eyes and realises the blonde chick (Valerie?) is still speaking. He glances over his shoulder where Ted is leaning nonchalantly (i.e. pretentiously) against the bar, a glass of red wine pinched between his fingers, deep in conversation with the red-head. His Bro gives him a nod, barely perceptible to his date (who's suffering from "I'm talking about _me_" blindness) and they move on up to Ted's apartment.

"My room-mate's out with her friend Jillian," Ted says, pointedly. "Hey, Tracy? You wanna come see my portfolio?" He steers the red-head into his room. The girl is very young and very drunk. Barney thinks that Ted's very welcome to her.

His own cutlet sits close, too close, pawing him. There's always a point in any encounter where he wants (needs, desperately) to run away but he battles on, fighting forward, metaphorical arm covering his metaphorical face, protecting himself from the shrapnel. That moment is now.

She pulls at his lapels, leans in and kisses him. There's no skill, but there's an enthusiasm spiced with just a hint of confusion. It's a turn on so his brain disengages and suddenly he's all over her, she's all over him, and she's got half his shirt unbuttoned before he even thinks to suggest moving to the bedroom.

(_Her_ bedroom…)

The chick laughs, a sweet, carefree laugh. _Jesus, to be that young, to be that full of life_. He kisses her hard before the dark tendrils get a chance to wrap themselves around his ankles and drag him down because sometimes only by facing his fears can he make the bigger ones go away.

She tastes like cherry-soda and ice-cream - like a girl, not a woman. It's different and light and easy and it's exactly what he needs. He pulls and he pushes and he gets her through the doorway.

(When the door opens it creaks twice, once at the first push, like a protest, and again when it's half open, like a sigh of release. He knows the sound. He's opened this door more than a few times, despite what he told Robin)

They tumble on to the bed, him on top of her (because he has to be, has to be) and he hitches up her sweater, one hand sliding beneath her to unhook the black lace bra (slutty) and she's topless in seconds, before she knows what's hit her. There's a little cry of resistance (like the door) but he nuzzles her gently and slips one hand up under the hem of her short (_really_ slutty, nice!) skirt and between her legs. Then there's a moan, a surrender, and he plays with her untill she's slick and panting, way past the point that any other man would stop. Then he goes down on her, burrowing his head between her thighs so that when he breathes in deep he gets a lungful of Robin's sheets, of the lingering scent of Robin's perfume, of the…

(He promised Robin he wouldn't do this again…)

But he can't stop, because this is all he's going to ever get of Robin and sometimes, a few special sometimes, a strand of chestnut hair tickles his nose, a single stray piece of Robin, unwanted and unneeded and clinging to the sheets. When that happens it makes him hard enough to drill a hole through the mattress…

Valerie comes once, twice, while he's zoned out in the scent of Robin, enveloped by the almost-sensation of Robin, tantalised by her ghost. Eventually (and he doesn't close his eyes, never closes his eyes because that would be a surrender) he pulls back, leaving Valerie squirming on the bed while he pulls down his pants, tears the foil wrapper with his teeth and has sheathed his stiff dick in once practiced movement. He steels himself, because the darkness is there again, at the edges of his awareness, closing in on him. He fights. He always fights; never surrenders.

Then he's inside the slutty chick with the black lace panties and too much lipstick and she's moving her body, really pumping it, she's _really_ into it and she's not holding back. She wraps her legs around his waist and clenches around him, brows knitted together in adorable concentration as if she's taking this all _so_ seriously.

All he feels is physical - connection, pleasure, remote and inside him at the same time. He craves it, he follows it, he runs it down - the mindless ecstasy of orgasm after orgasm, conquest after conquest. Because it's what his body tells him to do. It's more important than anything else ever will be.

Then his nostrils twitch, even as he's hammering into Valerie like a jackhammer, and his senses are overwhelmed by the scent of Robin, filling him up, almost tangible, caressing his bare skin, invading his brain and his eyes roll back in his head.

Barney comes…

(He promised Robin he wouldn't do this again).

Dimly, distantly, he feels something tickle his face. He opens his eyes (but he _never_ closes his eyes, that would be _cheating_. You don't go up against death with your eyes closed) to find that Valerie is kissing his nose.

Like a puppy.

He gives her a half-grin, a false grin and he pulls himself away from her, breaking the connection with an internal wince. Now it's over, he's lost interest in her. All he wants to do is push her out of the door, pull it shut (with a groan, with a sigh) and wrap himself in Robin's bedclothes until their owner returns home.

But he can never do that.

So he holds Valerie for a while (awkwardly) but doesn't let her fall asleep. They emerge, rumpled, dishevelled, about half an hour after they arrived. Ted's already sitting on the couch, watching TV.

When the chick is gone, Barney sits down next to him.

"Wanna play Wii?" He mumbles. His tongue still feels too thick for his mouth. He can still taste the faintest hint of Robin and its like poison, like an elixir. He doesn't want to lose it.

"Dude…" Ted says softly as he fumbles around the TV to get the Wii fired up. "Isn't that a bit weird for you?"

"What weird?"

Ted hands him a controller. "Doing it in Robin's bedroom?" Ted sees everything now. He understands everything now.

Barney looks over at him, chewing his lip. "Yeah, a bit," he admits.

They start the game in silence. Ted doesn't say anything more on the subject but Barney silently promises himself that he _definitely_ won't do that again.

He promised Robin he wouldn't do that again.

But when he closes his eyes, her scent is still wrapped around him, pulling him sideways like a fisherman's hook caught in his brain. The pain catches him off-guard and it hurts for the rest of the evening. He loses every game to Ted.

Sleeping with other women just isn't enough sometimes. Still, at least Ted understands. He gives him a sad smile and hands him beer after beer and he suggests that they don't bring chicks back to the apartment for a while.

Barney agrees, too enthusiastically. At least he doesn't have to pretend anymore.


End file.
